


A Taste Of Honey

by roachpatrol



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-24
Updated: 2011-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:11:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the best_enemies kinkmeme prompt: The White or Black Guardian sends the Master to help the Doctor find the Key to Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Taste Of Honey

He's in a ruined, dying shell of a body inside a moldering old TARDIS inside a Trakenite Enemy Garden that's on fire. Some sordid little coup has gotten out of hand at the worst possible moment, and a dropped torch has been ignored for just a moment too long... what a _pathetic_ series of coincidences to ruin all his plans. It is probably fair to say that this is the worst day of the Master's life, and it is also probably fair to say that this is going to be the very _last_ day of his life.   
   
He smashes his gnarled claws against the sparking, burning switches and dials until what remains of his flesh begins to sizzle, already too far gone to feel much more pain than the biting agony of his own helpless fury. His robes are on fire. His eyes-- he doesn't know if he can't see because of all the smoke or because his eyes have gone. There's nothing left to salvage, not his plans, not his TARDIS, not his own meager, ruined waste of a life. If there was anything left to do, any way out of this, any deal he could make or alternate path he could chose, he would take it.

But there isn't. He's failed. In every possible sense, he has failed.

"Not like this," he screams out against the darkness, over and over, "Not like this, not like this, not like this--"

And a bright spark in the darkness flickers, and says, "Then like what?"

But then, the answer is obvious: anything.

Anything else.

His lungs sear themselves on superheated air, and go still. His final working heart beats once, twice, and bursts.

He curls on the floor of his TARDIS. There is nothing left of him but pain.

And then there is light.

*

He comes to in a white room, but what registers first is that _nothing hurts._ He blinks, confused, and then reaches up to feel at his eyelids-- eyelids!-- and makes the second discovery that he has skin, thick and pink and soft and tender... he feels the curve of his full cheeks, the soft prominence of his nose. He has eyebrows, a _beard_ , a full head of silky hair. He hasn't thought one way or the other about hair in over a century, it feels ridiculously luxurious. His hands are sensitive and respond as quickly as thought to his every command, his fingernails neatly trimmed, a fine scattering of dark hair across the backs and up his forearms.

He has feet-- presumably. He can feel his toes, inside comfortable white suede boots. A thin white robe falls from his shoulders to pool around his calves, in the style of recent graduates from his old Academy-- as if he could feel any younger, any newer, this last detail heightens the sensation into absurdity. If he were back in his first body, soft borwn hair, bright blue eyes would he even recognize himself? Does he even remember what he used to look like, much less how that felt? He skates his fingers across the filmy material, feeling the healthy muscle of his chest, the flesh across his ribs, the swell of his stomach. He rubs at it, thinking of being fat, he thinks of eating, of food, each idea a separate, alien jewel to be examined facet by facet.

Then his hand brushes over something below his stomach, between his legs, and he nearly staggers. He grabs up his robe in handfuls and examines himself with complete bafflement. 

He has lived for so long in a world where every single moment he didn't succumb to death was a victory, a creature composed of equal parts pain and rage-- the feelings that blossom up from his fingers against his cock are a different language, one he has no idea how to parse.

There is a rough noise from behind him and he identifies it, after a moment's thought, as a throat clearing. He lets go of himself and turns, raising one eyebrow in ancient habit.

It's the Doctor.

They recognize one another at the same moment, and the Master does the only thing he can think of.

He runs. 

No plans, no defenses, not a single word in his head, he can only fling himself out of the Doctor's console room and go racing down the hall. He can hear the Doctor shout and then words come, he thinks _stupid, stupid-- the Doctor could never resist a chase._ They've always been this to each other, two predators taking turns to pounce, and he's just marked himself out as prey.

He tries to slow down, to stand and fight, but what if the Doctor knows what's happened to him? What if he knows how to reverse it? He can't go back to what he had been before, he can't, he _can't_. With every breath in his new body, every beat of his fierce new hearts, he knows that he will die before he goes back to that hellish, living death. He needs a _plan_.

The Doctor's gaining on him. 

He dodges around a corner, through a series of ridiculous colonnades, and into something that appears to be a broom closet. He holds his breath and scrabbles quietly about, peering at the cleaning supplies. Floor scrub, furniture polish, paint thinner, glass cleaner, bleach, laundry detergent... Why would you have furniture polish on a TARDIS, when the ship provides every stick of furniture-- polished or unpolished? Either the Doctor is going mad in his dotage, or his TARDIS is. Likely the both of them, though that's worked out in his favor often enough.

The Master pours out the glass cleaner from the spray bottle and pours in the paint thinner and the bleach. Should be irritating to the eyes, but if he had a match... he hears footsteps coming closer. They stop just in front of his closet.

He opens the door and is face to face with the Doctor. Face to chest, rather, the Doctor is so _tall._

"Pardon me, but do you have a light?" the Master asks.

The Doctor blinks, and pats at his pockets. "Will this do?" he asks, handing over a small disposable lighter.

"Yes, thank you," the Master says, taking it. Then he raises the spray bottle, pumps several shots into the air, and lights up the ensuing toxic mist.

There is a damp, sullen _womp_ ing noise, and the Master ducks under the Doctor's arm just before the whole closet explodes.

The Doctor takes the full force of the explosion and reels back against the wall, his clothes on fire, the spreading pool of ammonia and floor polish on fire, skeins of vapor curling through the air on fire and the Master laughs triumphantly and turns to run again.

He gets about halfway down the hall before he realizes the Doctor's no longer chasing him.

He stops running, and peers reluctantly over his shoulder.

The Doctor's lying in a heap at the edge of the conflagration, breathing shallowly, green-blue flames climbing up his scarf towards his slack face...

The Master breathes out, sharply, through his teeth, and shifts his weight awkwardly from foot to foot.

He goes back, strips off the Doctor's burning scarf and jacket, and hauls him two meters down the hall. Then the TARDIS fire extinguishers go off and water pours thickly down from the ceiling.

"Oh, for pity's sake," the Master remarks bitterly. He drops the Doctor face down in a growing puddle, and stalks off.  
   
*

Being wet is, after the initial shock, simply unpleasant. He tries to find some silver lining to it-- perhaps it is nice to be clean? perhaps having a whole, healthy body to shiver against the chill is a novel sensation to be cherished? but the optimistic platitudes ring hollow. He's already clean, and he'd rather his novel sensations run along the lines of warmth and comfort, softness and luxury, not squishy boots and icy, slippery silk rucking up around his thighs. His ridiculous excuse for a robe is a thin, sodden slip of a thing that leaves his calves and shoulders bare, and it proves approximately zero protection against the chill.

He shivers, ineffectively wipes his hair out of his eyes, and begins to try the doors along the hallway. Most of them are locked. One of them is full of cricket gear. One of them is nothing but barbaric weaponry and animal pelts-- he contemplates the furs, but doesn't feel like being damp _and_ itchy. One of them look out on to interstellar space, somewhere over the Delphi quadrant. Most are empty bedrooms. The fifth door he tries yields a tiny bathroom, with a sink and a few pink hand towels and a little window that looks out over a rose garden.

He washes ash and turpentine off his hands, then turns his attention to drying himself as best as he can with a few meager square inches of terrycloth. He rubs a towel over his neck with one hand while hopping up and down and peeling his soggy boots off with the other and, of course, the Doctor chooses this moment to insinuate himself into the little room. He pulls off the final boot and throws it at the Doctor's head, but of course the man dodges neatly out of the way.

He keeps _staring_.

"Yes, hello, Doctor," the Master says impatiently, scrubbing at his hair and noting with exasperation that the Doctor seems to be perfectly dry. He's almost too irritated to be frightened anymore.

"Master," the Doctor says, his eyes wide and wondering. "It _is_ you."

The Master raises his chin up, defiantly, and wonders how fast one can turn a hand towel into a garrote.

"You were expecting someone else?"  
   
"The White Guardian said he was sending me some help, but-- I thought you were dead," the Doctor says. "You _were_ dead. You can see how that tends to encourage a man to rule you out as a possibility, being dead."

"I _am_ the Master. Being dead is a minor inconvenience." The Master picks at the wet silk that clings to his thighs, and gives the Doctor, then the bathroom door, a pointed look. "Now, if you don't mind...?"

"Not at all," the Doctor says, coming over and insinuating his hands between the Master's, sliding his fingers in between the fabric and his skin. "Good heavens, you're _soaked_."

That wasn't what the Master meant at all, he thinks hazily. The Doctor slides a warm thumb up the inside of his leg, up to where it joins his hip, and he chokes and grabs at the Doctor's shoulders.

"What--"

"We should get this off you," the Doctor says, a little smile playing across his lips. "Don't you know it's terribly bad for your health to stand around in wet clothes?"

"I-- yes," the Master says, locking his knees as best as he can. "I do. I did. _Doctor_ \--" The Doctor teases the fabric higher, up to his hips and then over them, freeing his cock, which bounces eagerly up against his stomach. As if this is the signal the man had been waiting for the Doctor strips the robe off of him in one economic movement-- getting the Master's face and hair wet all over again-- and presses the Master back against the sink.

Then he drops to his knees.

"We've got to warm you up," he says. "Wouldn't want you catching a chill in my TARDIS. What would people say?"

"Doctor," the Master says. " _Oh_."

He revises his opinion of wetness: it is good. It is very, very, very good. He bucks into the Doctor's mouth and the Doctor shifts on his knees and grabs his hips for balance. At the firm press of fingers and the slick slide of tongue across the underside of his cock the Master gasps sharply and comes.

The Doctor catches him before he falls, holds him steady and sucks him down through the aftershocks. The Master lets the Doctor lift him up, dazed and clingy, to perch on the edge of the sink. His hands are sunk into the Doctor's shirt at the shoulders, and his legs fold naturally across the small of the Doctor's back. The Doctor lets his head rest against the Master's shoulder as he fumbles around the Master's legs to get at his trousers.

"Do you mind?" he asks. "May I fuck you, Master? Oh, go on, do say yes."

"Doctor," he murmurs, letting his head rest against the wall. He feels a deep, stupid, animal satisfaction. And yet still the Doctor is touching him...

"Yes?" the Doctor says, rummaging in one slack pocket. "Come on, let me..."

The Master focuses blearily at what the Doctor's come up with: it's a small tube of mechanical lubricant.

"You're going to bugger me with engine grease," he says, digging his ankles in.

"Well, that was the idea," the Doctor says, grinning. He makes a show of examining the label. "Grandmother's Finest Hypoallergenic Robot Oil, it says here. D'you suppose that's oil for robots, or from--"

"Get on with it," the Master says. It comes out more fond than exasperated, but the way the Doctor's looking at him he can hardly manage to care. He feels wonderful, he feels alive and hungry and, and _good_. He'd forgotten that there was any such thing as goodness, he realizes, as sweetness, or pleasure...

"Now, I don't take orders from just anyone," the Doctor is wittering on, squeezing a palmful of the stuff out. "I want you to know that. I simply happen to agree with your asessment at the moment." He reaches down and slicks the Master's soft cock, spreading it with exaggerated care from tip to root, then tracing his fingers down to knead at his balls. The Master chokes and squirms, painfully sensitive, but the Doctor is relentless and does not stop until he's coaxed the Master to hardness once more, until the Master is gasping for every breath, his cock straining against his stomach, his hips snapping to attention at each glancing touch.

"Get on with it," he begs. " _Please_."

"Ah, well, if you put it like that," the Doctor says smugly, and presses a finger sharply up into the Master's arse. The Master hitches around the intrusion, curses, drags his fingernails sharply across the back of the Doctor's neck. The Doctor makes a wonderful low growl and slicks his hands further, pressing a second finger in and spreading him open.

"Relax," the Doctor says, his voice just a little hoarse, a little distracted. "It's good for you. Therapeutic."

"I'm trying," the Master grits out, and manages to find a way to hold himself, to ease off just enough... The Doctor's two fingers curl into him, spreading him open, and the Doctor's breath hitches faster, and he strokes something inside the Master that makes him arch deliriously up into it, the ache and the pleasure all at once.

"More," the Master says. "More, Doctor, now, come on, I can't _wait_ \--"

"Y- yes, alright, alright, don't shout," the Doctor pants, clumsily spreading more oil across himself and then pressing in, and then _in_ , and the Master belatedly realizes that perhaps he should have checked the Doctor's equipment before he let the Doctor at him with it, because this is too much, this is insanely too much.

"You're--" he sputters, "you're _huge._ "

"Thank you," the Doctor says, sounding pleased. "Things did turn out rather well, this time 'round." He keeps pushing in. The Master sets his teeth and clings with all of his strength to the Doctor's shoulders.

"Relax," the Doctor rumbles, his hands gentle on the Master's hips, his cock still pressing in, impaling him. He's not sure he's got enough _space_ for it all. "Oh, _Master_..."

The Doctor's careful reverence helps, his hands stroking greedily against his skin, his eyes heavy-lidded and fond. The Master relaxes bit by bit, fighting the shudders that roll through him at every insistent press of the Doctor's cock. Pain, he can deal with, pain, he's not even sure if he'll ever be truly bothered by pain again, but pleasure--

"Doctor," he moans, as that something inside him _sparks.  
_  
"Ah, you like that? Yes..." the Doctor withdraws a little, then presses farther, sliding over it. The Master frantically runs his mind back through ancient anatomy lessons, trying to think, but then the Doctor hits it again and again and he's gasping and mindless with the sensation, working his hips frantically for more, each spark making him try harder for the next, spurring the Doctor on faster, faster--

"You're so-- so good, Master, you're wonderful, fantastic, oh," the Doctor is babbling, his deep voice wearing ragged at the edges.

The Master draws himself back from the Doctor, unfastening his hands from their desperate clutch of the Doctor's collar, and begins to work on the shirt's buttons.

The Doctor looks at him as if he's not sure what the Master could possibly want, as if this isn't the first time he's let the Master touch him like this they were young. He remembers the Doctor as he had known him last, Earth-bound and weary, too bitter for pleasure, and he thinks of the small ragged fellow he had seen so briefly in the War Lord's games before things had gone smashing apart, and of the slender young blond man that he had loved and lost in his own youth, who had turned him away, locked him out. They had all been pieces of his Doctor that he had never had, never shared, never been allowed to have no matter how hard he strove to earn or conquer.

He traces the lean lines of the Doctor's body as he peels the shirt away, the sharp hollows of his ribs and the long stretch of his stomach, and he thinks of the creases that had gathered at the corners of those long-ago blue eyes that he had never been allowed to touch again, of that first old age they had never gone into together. Their bodies had withered away in their own cold lonely orbits, and now, and _now_...

The Doctor is young again, under his hands, eager and shameless and warm in his grasping hands, hot and agonizingly sweet up inside his body, moving back and forth with the Master's rhythm. His eyelids flutter and he moans "Master," he holds the Master tightly to himself as if he too had felt the ache of all those awful years apart and he begs, "More, please, oh, don't you dare stop, you're so good--"

The Master doesn't know what the terms are yet of this miraculous armistice, but as the Doctor's breath grows frantic with need and he arches into the Master's every touch he realizes that he's willing to pay anything for this.

He climaxes in a great rush, bearing down hard on the Doctor's cock as he does so, fisting his hands through the Doctor's wild curls and dragging them over the edge of orgasm together. The Doctor murmurs his name over and over into his skin, thrusting sloppily as he comes, holding him so tightly that it hurts, so sweetly, as if they could never be too close again.

They lean together for a long moment, catching their breaths. And still the Doctor isn't stopping, is still touching him, is still letting him touch back. The Master is sensitive, sore, worn ragged, and it takes only the very lightest stroke to send him reeling, clutching at the Doctor and biting back desperate noises.

He lets the Doctor lower him to the floor, lets the Doctor take a discarded towel and start to clean him off, the both of them treating each other to endless gentle wondering touches. He doesn't mean to, tells himself each moment he's going to let the Doctor go, each touch is the last before he pulls himself together and sets about taking command of his situation. But then the Doctor touches him again, his chest, his chin, the softness of his wrists, and he lets himself be distracted in turn by the span of the Doctor's fingers, the sharp cut of his hips, the tempting hollow of his throat.

To his amazement-- and some small trace of horror-- his spent cock rallies under the attention. Regeneration's never taken him like this before, but then, he hasn't been reborn in such a prime state in a good long while, and never with the Doctor so accessible. When the Doctor gives him a fey smile and takes up his cock again in those long, gorgeous hands of his he thinks that this has been, in some way a mercy: he would never have gotten anything _done_. But he lies back and lets himself be persuaded to a final, sleepy climax that's almost more of a relief than anything, his own fingers winding through the Doctor's hair, the Doctor's name a soft weight on his lips.

He blinks his eyes heavily open. He feels hollow, he feels as if some great and terrible poison has been lanced out of his being and there is nothing left of him but an aching shell.

He feels better.

"There you are," the Doctor murmurs, stroking his hair. "Oh, Master."

"Doctor," the Master murmurs, and the man favors him with a great, wide, blinding smile, as he hasn't smiled at the Master in so, so long. It catches him right between the hearts and _burns_ , and the Master finds himself smiling back, helpless and well past love-struck.

Falling: all his lives he's been falling.

*

His white robe is dry. The Master casts around for anything-- _anything_ \-- else to put on and comes up empty-handed. Reluctantly he pulls the thing back on, only marginally appeased by the Doctor's appreciative attention to his bare legs.

Maybe he'll wear more white, in this incarnation. It does good things for his color.

The roses outside the window are lovely, and look entirely real. He's almost certain that this bathroom looks out over one of the TARDIS gardens, and not a hologram or an external dimension, and that he'd be able to fit through the window before the Doctor could grab him. He's sore-- very sore, _extremely_ sore-- and a bit shaky but still whole, still healthy. Still strong.

He puts his hand on the windowsill, and hears the Doctor shift behind him, sitting up.

"Master," he says.

"Doctor," the Master says, not looking back at him.

"Come here," the Doctor says gently. "Please, Master, come on. Sit."

Step by careful step, the Master does so. The Doctor puts his arm around him and draws him close, so that they are sitting side by side, pressed close at hip and shoulder. The Master doesn't relax, and neither does the Doctor. They stare out the window together, and all the things the Master can think of to say or ask or demand stick painfully in his throat.

He's never been able to stop loving the Doctor as dearly as he hates him, but somewhere along the cold and terrible centuries he has forgotten how to _trust._

As if he's thinking the same thing, the Doctor begins to explain what, exactly, is going on. He talks, haltingly at first and then faster, words pouring out of him in an awkward torrent, about the White Guardian and the Black Guardian and the Key to Time and the way the universe is depending on him-- them. The two of them, together.

Finally he takes a deep breath, and looks down at him, as grave as the Master's ever seen him. His eyes are the exact same clear, striking blue that he had first had when he and the Master had been young together, when they had been two blue-eyed boys taking their first steps into a universe that would break them into such very different people.

"If you want to rule the universe," the Doctor says to him, "as you've so often stated, and I simply want to see it, as _I've_ so often stated, I think both of our purposes will be suited quite nicely in the short term by our cooperation in the grand endeavor of making sure it doesn't go smash-bang-pffft. We'll put together the Key and whatever happens after that-- we'll figure it out then. Now, do we have a deal?"

The Master leans up and kisses him quite thoroughly.

"I could stand to be convinced," he says.

"Oh, well in that case," the Doctor says, and grins. He bounds to his feet and rubs his hands briskly together, then offers one to the Master. "Shall we go?"

"Go?"

The Doctor waggles his hand. " _Go_ ," he repeats. "The quest: life, death, adventure! Damsels to fight, dragons to save, keys to assemble, Masters to _convince_. It's not all going to just _wait_ while we have a lie in."

The Master takes a long, careful breath, and takes the Doctor's hand. "Alright," he decides. "Alright, yes. Let's go on your little quest, Doctor."

The Doctor pulls him to his feet, and when he's standing, shakes his hand. "Deal," he says.

"Deal," the Master repeats. He laughs, a trifle helplessly, and tucks his arm into the Doctor's. The man is ludicrously tall, but he's at least got his limbs at fairly reasonable heights.

Arm in arm, they head for the console room.  
 


End file.
